The noted philosopher Rodney Dangerfield described his fictional marriage in a way that provides insight into the widening gulf in U.S. environmental politics: "She's a water sign. I'm an Earth sign. Together, we make mud."
It's a useful exercise to look at today's muddy, swampy political mess through the lens of five decades past.
Since the 1970's, each new decade brought a different perspective.
1970s
President Nixon in 1974. (Credit: National Archives)
The seventies dawned with a year that saw the founding of Earth Day and two pivotal government agencies—the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—under that quintessential tree-hugger, President Richard M. Nixon.
Three weeks into the decade, Nixon killed a proposal to pave 39 acres of the already-stressed Everglades into a massive jetport. Within two years, he banned DDT, and signed the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act (the Environmental Impact Statement law).
Even when Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act as too costly, a unified Congress overrode it. Nixon tipped his hat to bipartisan environmental values in his 1970 State of the Union address: "Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions".
Existing conservation groups like the Environmental Defense Fund (founded 1967), the World Wildlife Fund (1961) and the Sierra Club (1891) enjoy expanded memberships and political clout, while new groups like Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defense Council (both 1970) and Greenpeace (1971) joined the fray.
1980s
Late seventies resentment over the snail darter undermined support for the Endangered Species Act. The tiny fish with a tiny habitat temporarily blocked completion of Tennessee's Tellico Dam.
Meanwhile, a toxic waste crisis at Love Canal led to the 1980 Superfund law. And 1979's near-calamity at Three Mile Island ended construction of new nuclear power plants.
Jimmy Carter suffered a landslide loss to Ronald Reagan, whose EPA and Interior leaders schemed to hobble their own departments.
And my favorite artifact concerns two young Congressmen and the 1980 voting scorecard from the League of Conservation Voters: Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich got a 50 percent approval rating from LCV, outpacing Tennessee Democrat Al Gore, at 35 percent.
The nineties arrived on the heels of a decade of high-profile eco-disasters: Bhopal, Chernobyl, medical waste on New Jersey beaches, the first dire reports of a warming planet and a vanishing ozone layer, and, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez spill.
The 20th annual Earth Day saw a huge crowd turn out on the Washington Mall.
George H. W. Bush, who promised to be the "Environmental President," signed strong revisions to the Clean Air Act – unthinkable for subsequent Republican presidents.
Corporate "greenwashing" – dubious marketing-inspired claims of environmental virtue by notoriously dirty companies and industries – hit an all-time high. And ABC turned over two hours of its most valuable property – prime time – for an Earth Day special positively choked with A-list celebrities: Bette Midler as Mother Earth, Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Magic Johnson, the aforementioned Rodney Dangerfield, and of course, America's Dad, Bill Cosby.
2000s
21st Century environmental politics began with Bush v Gore. Al Gore's million-vote win was an excruciating Electoral College loss. Instead of a president both fluent in and passionate on climate change we got an oil man whose Cardinal Richelieu, Vice President Dick Cheney, took charge of deregulatory efforts and energy policy.
Cheney's Energy Task Force operated largely in secrecy, paving the way for the fracking boom by removing regulatory obstacles. The decade was bracketed by domestic disasters that reduced the environment as a political concern: The 2001 Al Qaeda attacks and the 2008 economic collapse.
2010s
Protests over the Supreme Court Citizen United decision. (Credit: Joe Brusky/flickr)
In the last month of 2009, the Copenhagen climate talks ended in failure. Climate deniers made hay with a few ill-worded emails in a cache of thousands of hacked messages from climate scientists.
Not all Americans have come to grips with the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision. It unleashed huge amounts of anonymous campaign spending for candidates and fake grassroots groups like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.
As the money started pouring in, the Tea Party (b. 2009) brought in the ground troops. Many moderate Republicans, spooked by the prospects of being "primaried" from the far right, either altered their views or fled from politics altogether. Prominent Republicans who backed away from advocating action on climate change included Mitt Romney, John McCain, Newt Gingrich and Lindsey Graham.
The Democrats lost control of the House in the 2010 midterms, stifling much of the "hope" in the two-year-old Obama presidency. And the kind of high profile disasters that jelled public sentiment in 1990 had impact only as lethal tragedies, not catalysts: the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010, the Fukushima meltdown a year later, and the unprecedented damage of Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
2020s
Clean energy is finally taking hold. But climate-denying leaders hold forth in the U.K., Australia, Brazil, and, of course, the U.S.
This is the decade when we may let one of those comparatively easy-to-save marine mammals, the vaquita porpoise, go extinct in full view. The ice caps liquidating. Venice awash. Australia ablaze. Oceans full of acid, and plastic.
Is America awake? We'll see. We cannot afford to make mud anymore.
Peter Dykstra is our weekend editor and columnist. His views do not represent those of Environmental Health News, The Daily Climate or publisher, Environmental Health Sciences.
Environmental protests are increasingly met with severe repression and criminalization, threatening democracy and human rights, according to UN special rapporteur Michel Forst.
Europe has seen a surge in police brutality and heavy-handed legal measures against environmental defenders, often using outdated or new restrictive laws.
Public discourse often labels environmental activists as "eco-terrorists" or "green Talibans," inciting public and media hostility.
Countries like Italy, Germany and the UK employ laws to criminalize peaceful protests, with harsh sentences and severe legal penalties.
Key quote:
"In terms of freedom of speech and the right to protest, certainly in regards to climate change, the world is moving in the wrong direction."
— Michel Forst, UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders.
Why this matters:
The repression of environmental activists undermines basic human rights and stifles efforts to address climate change. This atmosphere of fear can stymie broader civic engagement and deter necessary actions to address environmental crises. At a time when urgent action is needed to combat climate change and environmental degradation, silencing activists could have negative consequences for the planet and future generations.
CAMERON PARISH, La. — Late into the night, John Allaire watches the facility next to his home shoot 300-foot flares from stacks.
He lives within eyesight of southwest Louisiana’s salty shores, where, for decades, he’s witnessed nearly 200 feet of land between it and his property line disappear into the sea. Two-thirds of the land was rebuilt to aid the oil and gas industry’s LNG expansion. LNG — shorthand for liquified natural gas – is natural gas that's cooled to liquid form for easier storage or transport; it equates to 1/600th the volume of natural gas in a gaseous state. It’s used to generate electricity, or fuel stove tops and home heaters, and in industrial processes like manufacturing fertilizer.
In the U.S., at least 30 new LNG terminal facilities have been constructed or proposed since 2016, according to the
Oil and Gas Watch project. Louisiana and Texas’ Gulf Coast, where five facilities are already operating, will host roughly two-thirds of the new LNG terminals – meaning at least 22 Gulf Coast LNG facilities are currently under construction, were recently approved to break ground or are under further regulatory review.
Although the U.S. didn’t ship LNG until 2016, when a freight tanker left, a few miles from where Cameron Parish’s LNG plants are today, last year the country became the global leader in LNG production and export volume, leapfrogging exporters like Qatar and Australia. The
EIA’s most recent annual outlook estimated that between the current year and 2050, U.S. LNG exports will increase by 152%.
Allaire, 68, watches how saltwater collects where rainwater once fed the area’s diminishing coastal wetlands. “We still come down here with the kids and set out the fishing rods. It's not as nice as it used to be,” he told
Environmental Health News (EHN).
That intimacy with nature drew Allaire to the area when he purchased 311 acres in 1998. An environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran, he helped lead environmental assessments and manage clean-ups, and although retired, he still works part-time as an environmental consultant with major petroleum companies. With a lifetime of oil and gas industry expertise, he’s watched the industry's footprint spread across Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile shores and beyond. Now that the footprints are at the edge of his backyard, Allaire is among a cohort of organizers, residents and fisher-folk in the region mobilizing to stop LNG facility construction. For him, the industry’s expansion usurps the right-or-wrong ethics he carried across his consulting career. For anglers, oil and gas infrastructure has destroyed fishing grounds and prevented smaller vessels from accessing the seafood-rich waters of the Calcasieu River.
From the view of Allaire’s white pickup truck as he drives across his property to the ocean’s shore, he points to where a new LNG facility will replace marshlands. Commonwealth LNG intends to clear the land of trees and then backfill the remaining low-lying field.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.”
Community bands together
John Allaire, left, purchased 311 acres in Cameron Parish in 1998, and has watched the oil and gas industry's footprint spread to his property.
Credit: John Allaire
During an Earth Day rally in April, community members gathered in the urban center of Lake Charles to demand local oil and gas industries help deliver a safer, healthier future for all. In between live acts by artists performing south Louisiana’s quintessential zydeco musical style, speakers like James Hiatt, a Calcasieu Parish native with ties to Cameron Parish and a Healthy Gulf organizer, and RISE St. James organizer Sharon Lavigne, who’s fighting against LNG development in rural Plaquemines Parish near the city of New Orleans, asked the nearly 100 in attendance to imagine a day in which the skyline isn’t dotted by oil and gas infrastructure.
Not long ago, it was hard to imagine an Earth Day rally in southwest Louisiana at all. For decades, the area has been decorated with fossil fuel infrastructure. Sunsets on some days are highlighted by the chemicals in the air; at night, thousands of facilities’ lights dot the dark sky.
“It takes a lot of balls for people to start speaking up,” Shreyas Vasudevan, a campaign researcher with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told EHN in the days after the rally. In a region with its history and economy intertwined with oil and gas production, “you can get a lot of social criticism – or ostracization, as well – even threats to your life.”
Many are involved in local, regional and national advocacy groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Healthy Gulf, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and the National Audubon Society.
“You see what’s happening with the environment,” Allaire said. “When the facts change, I got to change my mind about what we’re doing.” - John Allaire, environmental engineer and 30-year oil and gas industry veteran
But environmental organizers are fighting a multi-billion-dollar industry with federal and state winds at its back. And LNG’s federal support is coupled with existing state initiatives.
Under outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards — a term-limited Democrat — the state pledged a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050. Natural gas, which the LNG industry markets as a cleaner-burning alternative, is cited as one of the state’s solutions. Louisiana is the only state that produces a majority of its carbon emissions through fossil fuels refining industries, like LNG, rather than energy production or transportation. Governor Edwards’ office did not return EHN’s request for comment.
This accommodating attitude towards oil and gas industries has resulted in a workforce that’s trained to work in LNG refining facilities across much of the rural Gulf region, said Steven Miles, a lawyer at Baker Botts LLP and a fellow at the Baker Institute’s Center on Energy Studies. Simultaneously, anti-industrialization pushback is lacking. It’s good news for industries like LNG.
“The bad news,” Miles added. “[LNG facilities] are all being jammed in the same areas.”
One rallying cry for opponents is local health. The Environmental Integrity Project found that LNG export terminals emit chemicals like carbon monoxide –potentially deadly– and sulfur dioxide, of which the American Lung Association says long-term exposure can lead to heart disease, cancer, and damage to internal or female reproductive organs.
An analysis of emissions monitoring reports by the advocacy group the Louisiana Bucket Brigade found that Venture Global’s existing Calcasieu Pass facility had more than 2,000 permit violations.That includes exceeding the permit’s authorized air emissions limit to release nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds 286 out of its first 343 days of operation.
The Marvel Crane, the first liquid natural gas carrier to transport natural gas from the Southwest Louisiana LNG facility, transits a channel in Hackberry, Louisiana, May 28, 2019.
“This is just one facility,” at a time when three more facilities have been proposed in the region and state, Vasudevan said. Venture Global’s operational LNG facility — also known as Calcasieu Pass — “is much smaller than the other facility they’ve proposed.”
In an area that experienced 18 feet of storm surge during Hurricane Laura in 2020 — and just weeks later, struck by Hurricane Delta — Venture Global is planning to build a second export terminal Known as “CP2,” it’s the largest of the roughly two dozen proposed Gulf LNG export terminals, and a key focal point for the region’s local organizing effort.
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” Hiatt told EHN of locals’ nostalgia for a community before storms like Rita in 2005 brought up to 15 feet of storm surge, only for Laura to repeat the damage in 2020. Throughout that time, the parish’s population dipped from roughly 10,000 to 5,000. “But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG. Folks in Cameron think that's going to bring back community, bring back the schools, bring back this time before we had all these storms — when Cameron was pretty prosperous.”
“Clearly,” for the oil and gas industry, “the idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports,” Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana, told EHN.
Helping fishers’ impacted by LNG is about “actual survival of this unique culture,” Cooke said.
In a measure of organizers’ success, she pointed to a recent permit hearing for Venture Global’s CP2 proposal. Regionally, it’s the only project that’s received an environmental permit, but not its export permit, which remains under federal review. At the meeting, some spoke on the company’s behalf. As an organizer, it was a moment of clarity, Cooke explained. Venture Global officials “had obviously done a lot of coaching and organizing and getting people together in Cameron to speak out on their behalf,” Cooke said. “So, in a way, that was bad. But in another way, it shows that we really had an impact.”
“It also shows that we have a lot to do,” Cooke added.
Environmental organizers like Alyssa Portaro describe a sense of fortitude among activists — she and her husband to the region’s nearby town of Vinton near the Texas-Louisiana border. Since the families’ relocation to their farm, Portaro has worked with Cameron Parish fisher-folk.
“I’ve not witnessed ‘community’ anywhere like there is in Louisiana,” Portaro told EHN. But a New Jersey native, she understands the toll environmental pollution has on low-income communities. “This environment, it’s so at risk — and it’s currently getting sacrificed to big industries.”
“People don’t know what we’d do without oil and gas. It comes at a big price,” she added.
Southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish is one of the state’s most rural localities. Marine economies were the area’s economic drivers until natural disasters and LNG facilities began pushing locals out, commercial fishers claim.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
Residents “don’t really want LNG as much as they want Cameron [Parish] from 1990 back,” James Hiatt , a Healthy Gulf organizer, told EHN. "But the wolf knocking at the door is LNG."
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
For the most part, Cameron Parish’s life and economy has historically taken place at sea. As new LNG facilities are operational or in planning locally, locals claim the community they once knew is nearly unrecognizable.
Credit: Xander Peters for Environmental Health News
A disappearing parish
The stakes are seemingly higher for a region like southwest Louisiana, which is the epicenter of climate change impacts.
In nearly a century, the state has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of land to coastal erosion. In part driving the state’s erosion crisis is the compounding impacts of Mississippi River infrastructure and oil and gas industry activity, such as dredging canals for shipping purposes, according to a March study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said Cameron Parish could lose more land than other coastal parishes over the next 50 years. A recent Climate Central report says the parish will be underwater within that time frame.
On top of erosion and sea level rise impacts, in August, 2023, marshland across southwest Louisiana’s Cameron Parish burned. The fires were among at least 600 across the Bayou State this year. Statewide, roughly 60,000 acres burned — a more than six-fold increase of the state’s average acres burned per year in the past decade alone.
But while the blaze avoided coastal Louisiana communities like Cameron Parish, the fires represented a warning coming from a growing chorus of locals across the region — one that’s echoes by the local commercial fishing population, who claimed to have experienced unusually low yields during the same time, according to a statement from a local environmental group. At the site of the Cameron Parish fires are locations for two proposed LNG expansion projects.
"The idea is to transform what was once the center of commercial fishing in Louisiana to gas exports.” - Cindy Robertson, an environmental activist in southwest Louisiana
It was an unusual occurrence for an area that’s more often itself underwater this time of year due to a storm surge from powerful storms. For LNG expansion’s local opposition, it was a red flag.
As the Louisiana Bucket Brigade has noted prior, the confluence of climate change’s raising of sea levels and the construction of LNG export terminals — some are proposed at the size of nearly 700 football fields — are wiping away the marshland folks like Allaire watched wither. Among their fears is that the future facilities won’t be able to withstand the power of another storm like Laura and its storm surge, which wiped away entire communities in 2020.
Amidst these regional climate impacts, LNG infrastructure has shown potential to exacerbate the accumulation of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. For the most part, LNG is made up of methane — a greenhouse gas that’s more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Among the 22 current LNG facility proposals, the advocacy group Sierra Club described a combined climate pollution output that would roughly equal to that of about 440 coal plants.
The climate impacts prompt some of the LNG industry’s uncertainty going forward. It isn’t clear if Asian countries, key importers of U.S. LNG, will “embrace these energy transition issues,” said David Dismuke, an energy consultant and the former executive director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Energy Studies. Likewise, European nations remain skeptical of embracing LNG as a future staple fuel source.
“They really don't want to have to pull the trigger,” Dismukes added, referring to Europe’s hesitation to commit more resources to exporting LNG from the American market. “They don't want to go down that road.”
While there will be a tapering down of natural gas supply, Miles explained, “we’re going to need natural gas for a long time,” as larger battery storage for renewables is still unavailable.
“I'm not one of these futurists that can tell you where we're going to be, but I just don't see everything being extreme,” Dismukes said. “I don't see what we've already built getting stranded and going away, either.”
For now, LNG seems here to stay. From 2012 to 2022,U.S. natural gas demand — the sum of both domestic consumption and gross exports — rose by a whopping 43%, reported the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. Meanwhile, in oil and gas hotbeds like Louisiana and Texas, natural gas demand grew by 116%.
Throughout 25 years, Allaire has witnessed southwest Louisiana’s land slowly fade, in part driven by the same industrial spread regionally. Near where the front door of his travel trailer sits underneath the aluminum awning, he points to a chenier ridge located near the end of the property. It’s disappearing, he said.
“See the sand washing over, in here?” Allaire says, as he points towards the stretches of his property. “This pond used to go down for a half mile. This is all that's left of it on this side.”
A new report by the David Suzuki Foundation highlights the environmental and long-term energy security risks posed by the rapid expansion of liquefied natural gas fracking in the Montney basin in Canada.
The Montney basin, a major gas resource, is heavily exploited for liquified natural gas, or LNG. According to a new report, LNG production in the area risks water supplies and habitats.
Fracking in Montney consumes 21.7 billion liters of water annually, potentially rising to 35 billion with increased LNG exports.
The process has been linked to numerous earthquakes in the region, raising public safety concerns and insurance issues.
Key quote:
"Production has been made up by unconventional plays like the Montney which can only be accessed with the technology of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling. And those technologies come with significant environmental impacts in terms of climate change, water consumption, biodiversity loss and land disturbance."
— David Hughes, author of the comprehensive report called “Drilling into the Montney.”
Renewable energy projects in Ohio face fierce opposition from fossil fuel-backed groups, despite incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act designed to boost solar and wind development across the nation.
The Inflation Reduction Act provides substantial tax credits and incentives that have made renewables as affordable as fossil-fuel energy sources. However, developers in Republican-run Ohio remain skeptical about overcoming local regulatory and political obstacles.
Ohio's 2021 Senate Bill 52 allows local governments to veto solar and wind projects, but not fossil fuel facilities, creating an uneven playing field, green-energy advocates say. The bill is just one example of the organized efforts that have passed 400 local restrictions against wind, solar and other projects in 41 states, according to a 2024 report by Columbia Law School.
Fossil fuel-backed groups in Ohio are spreading misinformation and lobbying against renewable energy projects, significantly slowing down development.
Key quote:
“Ohio is probably one of the most biased states in terms of its treatment of renewables as this catastrophic thing that needs to be limited and banned.”
— Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute.
$275 million will be allocated through the Powering Affordable Clean Energy (PACE) program, which promotes clean electrification in rural areas such as Alaska, Arizona, Kentucky and Nebraska.
The USDA will provide $100 million in grants and loans via the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) across 39 states and Puerto Rico.
Notable projects include $100 million for battery storage systems in Alaska and $82,000 for an energy-efficient grain dryer in New York.
Key quote:
“We are excited to partner with hundreds more family farms and small businesses as well as rural electric cooperatives and local clean energy developers to address the impacts of climate change, grow the economy and keep rural communities throughout the country strong and resilient.”
— Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
Why this matters:
According to the Biden administration, the $11-billion IRA funds it promised in 2023 is the most significant investment in rural electrification since the 1930's New Deal. Investing in rural renewable energy projects helps combat climate change while supporting the economic stability and resilience of rural communities. This funding represents a significant effort to modernize rural energy infrastructure, promoting sustainability and energy efficiency.
The carbon-credit market shrank significantly last year due to reports questioning the environmental impact of many schemes.
Experts from the Climate Crisis Advisory Group suggest that proper reform could generate billions for climate action.
Recommendations include adopting scientific standards, ensuring financial benefits for local communities and prioritizing carbon-removal projects.
Key quote:
"The voluntary carbon market is very reluctant to take this fully on board. Our report is totally independent of them. It is going to be challenging, but our simple message is that unless you do this, you’re out of business."
— Sir David King, former UK chief scientific adviser and head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group.
Why this matters:
Carbon credits have been presented as a pivotal tool in the fight against climate change, offering a mechanism for businesses to compensate for their carbon footprint by funding projects that reduce or absorb CO2 emissions. However, the lack of stringent standards has led to inconsistencies and allegations of greenwashing, where companies claim environmental benefits without substantial actions.
The consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen released a model prosecution memo urging criminal charges against major oil companies for heat-related deaths.
The memo targets nine companies, arguing their actions contribute to climate change and extreme weather.
Legal experts say 403 deaths from Maricopa County's heat wave meet criteria for reckless manslaughter or second-degree murder.
Key quote:
"These climate disasters are the specific result of decisions and actions that were made by particular actors (...)These heat deaths might be more than just tragedies, but actually crimes."
— Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel, Public Citizen and co-author of the memo.
